Tyson goes vegetarian
by Inyoface
Summary: Fed up with Tyson's obnoxious behaviour in restaurants and passion for exotic meats such as monkey, cat and even kangaroo balls, the gang dares him to face his hardest challenge yet: going vegetarian for 24 hours!


Tyson goes Vegetarian

Fed up with Tyson"s obnoxious behaviour in restaurants and passion for exotic meats such as monkey, cat and even kangaroo balls, the gang dares him to face his hardest challenge yet, -going vegetarian for 24 hours!

-x-

"I hate going out to eat with you Tyson, it is humiliating." Max said. Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Why? I always finish my plate, and everyone else's too! The chef must feel really complimented."

Indeed Tyson felt as though he was god's gift to cooks.

Max sighed. "Please don't ask if they serve cat this time."

"But we are going to a Chinese restaurant." Tyson protested.

"Do you even realise how offensive that is to Ray?" Hilary reminded him.

Ray nodded in sorrow. "Makes me feel like you want to eat me inside out."

"Nah, just the kitty part of you, I'll leave the rest." Tyson joked.

Ray couldn't help but feel threatened. "Neko-Jins are an endangered species."

Tyson licked his lips. "So are orang-utans, but they are still tasty."

"God, Tyson, you disgust me!" Hilary cried out. "I spend all my weekends volunteering at an animal shelter and then our weekly dinners come around and I feel filthy by association."

"If you can't fight them, join them, eh." Tyson suggested and let out one of his obnoxious belly laughs.

By now everyone in the gang was repulsed by Tyson's disrespectful and just plain gross behaviour. The previous week they had witnessed him eat iced monkey brain for desert, the week before that: Kangaroo balls. Kenny, who had always had a weak stomach, had decided to stop tagging along after having vomited while watching Tyson devour eyeball soup (Tyson still continued eating, not bothered by the tart smell of vomit). Kai had already stopped dining in Tyson's presence after the first world tournament, when he had witnessed him eat culinary obnoxities such as Borscht for breakfast and cereal with ketchup. Right now his behaviour had reached a peak as Tyson was going through an exotic animal meat phase.

"How do you even get this stuff?" Max asked. "I have never seen fried monkey on a menu."

"In our circles it is known as bushmeat. I have a guy for it." Tyson explained nonchalantly.

"You have a monkey-meat guy?"

"I have a guy for everything: crocodile eggs, gorilla milk... even shark fin soup!"

Hilary was shaking her head in disbelief. "Hell, Tyson, you are the Dr Evil of foods."

"Nah, my guy is, I just buy from him, he himself doesn't eat it, I think he's a vegan."

"That doesn't make any sense." Ray, a committed vegetarian himself, pointed out.

"Please, Tyson, promise us, no bushmeat today!" Hilary begged him.

"Aw man, you guys are no fun."

But his friends remained persistent. "Promise us!"

"Okay, fine, fine. No bushmeat. But monkey is soooo tasty, guys. It is basically nature's human."

Ray shuddered. "I don't understand how you think that makes it sound any more appealing... or less disturbing."

"You don't understand. Once you have _the_ _hunger_ nothing will ever satisfy your tastebuds again."

-x-x-x-

The gang arrived at the restaurant and looked through the menu. As predicted, Tyson couldn't find any item amongst the "generic meats" that satisfied _the_ _hunger,_ as he liked to affectionately refer to it.

"This menu is boring." he announced.

"Can't you just order something normal. Like Chow Mein?" Hilary suggested.

Tyson shot her suggestion down right away. "Bland."

"Not if you add mustard to it." Max protested.

"You must have the most boring pallet of anyone I know." Tyson told him.

Ray came up with a compromise: "You could try bone marrow and tripe soup. Isn't that a little exotic?"

"Oh please, it is about as exotic as an exotic dancer, meaning boring and overused."

Max was shaking his head in disbelief. "I think you are the only man who thinks that of a stripper."

A smiling waiter arrived at their table. He was a distant relative of Ray, hence why Ray was even more concerned than ever about Tyson's behaviour. However, everything went smooth, to everyone's surprise, Tyson ordered the tripe soup with some fried kidneys on the side. But then Hilary noticed something suspicious occurring.

"Did you just try to pass the waiter a note?" She scorned him.

"No, no, of course not." Tyson reached down under the table but Max got a hold of it first.

" _Do you serve cat_?" He read to the group.

Ray shivered and tucked in his imaginary tail.

"It sounds a lot worse when you read it out loud." Tyson defended himself.

"This is it Tyson. I am no longer eating out with you." Hilary announced. "You broke your promise."

Everyone else at the table nodded in agreement.

"Oh come on guys, please, give me another chance."

Suddenly, and evil smirk formed on Hilary's lips. "I just had an idea. A little challenge. If you accomplish the challenge, we will go out to eat with you again. If not, you are officially excluded from our weekly dinners."

"What's the challenge?" Tyson asked.

"For the next 24 hours you will not eat a single peace of meat."

"Or drink any milk that you cannot buy at a conventional supermarket." Max added in.

"Does it include crocodile eggs?"

"Yes, it includes crocodile eggs and kangaroo testes and eyeballs. Basically anything you can get from your bushmeat guy."

Tyson cried some bitter tears over the missed opportunities. "Fine, 24 hours, easy breezy, I can do that."

-x-

It was not easy breezy. It was only 8 am and Tyson was already struggling. So Max had come over to help him and Kai had come over to laugh at him. In fact, Tyson had not seen Kai look this amused since... ever.

"Man, I _just_ bought these endangered bird eggs and I was hoping to make a red-list-and-ham omelet out of them, can I just eat them?"

Max was shaking his head. "Nope, still counts."

He just had to be a stickler.

"How about some cereal with ketchup? You used to love that." Kai suggested with a content smirk on his face.

Tyson shrugged. "Used to, it just tastes too _urban_ to me now."

"Too urban?"

"Not decadent enough to pleasure my sophisticated pallet." Sir Tyson explained.

Max and Kai looked at the delusional cretin in astonishment and then broke out into loud, obnoxious laughter.

"You're not sophisticated. You buy food off the creeps who drop off scrap metal at my granddad's junkyard." Kai reminded him. "Now, how about a salad wrap?"

-x-

Tyson had _suffered_ through his salad wrap and _the hunger_ returned. Hilary had invited him over for lunch but he couldn't hold out for that long, so he had gone to McDonalds and ordered the first veggie burger of his life. The clerk actually laughed in his face.

It was no good, it tasted like a cheap knockoff of a baby seal patty.

When he arrived at Hilary's he was forced to face another first. Well two firsts. Quinoa and Kale! She had prepared some sort of salad by mixing those two with carrot. She called it a protein bomb. Tyson called it the KKK. Even after she pointed out to him that only one of those items was actually spelled with a K.

"I'm scared of carrots. Don't they turn you orange?" Tyson argued.

"Only if you eat a lot of them. Though knowing you, that might actually be a problem." She mocked him.

While eating they had some light conversation to match their light meal.

"There is a stranded whale down by the beach." Tyson said.

"That is horrible."

"Yeah, I want to eat it sooo badly, but because of our stupid bet, I can't."

"You are a terrible human being."

-x-

Before dinner Ray brought Tyson to an animal shelter, hoping to incite some compassion, especially towards fellow cats, in his cruel friend.

"What comes to your mind when you see these poor shelter pets in these tiny cages." he asked.

Tyson licked his lips. "They look tasty. The lack of movement would make their meat nice and tender. Is there a business card they can give me? Maybe I can hook this place up with my bushmeat guy. Would be a shame if they all these delicacies go to waste."

"They're not tender meats, they're living, breathing animals." Ray responded in shock.

"Well most of them get killed anyway. I just want to make sure he gets a hold of them first, euthanasia spoils the taste."

-x-

Finally the time had come for Tyson's last (vegetarian) supper. This time Kai had prepared his meal. And in proper Russian tradition, he had cooked cabbage.

Only cabbage.

"Don't you Russkies serve any sides with this?"

Kai shrugged. "I could get you some potato."

He walked into the kitchen and returned with a tall glass filled with a mysterious clear liquid.

"What's that?" Tyson asked.

"Distilled potato."

"Vodka?"

Kai nodded.

"Not a side, bro!" Tyson protested. "This is the most depressing meal ever, no wonder you are always so pissed."

"That's what the vodka is for." Kai reminded him.

"Can I at least turn it into a Bloody Mary? Tyson suggested.

Kai shrugged. "Whatever."

Tyson pulled a bottle containing a mysterious, rancid smelling, dark red liquid and started pouring it into his drink.

"What is that?" Kai asked.

"Pigs blood." Tyson responded, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Kai grabbed Tyson's drink and emptied it in the drain.

"Hey, what did you do that for?" Tyson cried out.

"That is not how you prepare a Bloody Mary." Kai scolded him.

"It should be. Why else would there be the word "bloody" in the name?"

-x-

The next morning Tyson woke up feeling very soviet.

Hungry that is.

 _The hunger_ to be specific.

He walked down the staircase humming a song and wiggling his rump and loin.

Kai had spend the night camping next to the fridge, making sure Tyson wouldn't make a secret midnight trip to the kitchen for some comodo dragon jerky, rhino pâte

or something equally as endangered.

"I still can't believe you pulled it off." he complimented his brave friend.

In fact, Tyson almost didn't pull it off. He had fallen asleep watching the entrance to the kitchen, waiting for Kai to fall asleep before him, so he could sneak in.

While Tyson was in the process of preparing the red-list omelet he had been craving so badly, the rest of the gang burst into his apartment, keen on celebrating having saved one day worth of threatened species from Tyson's consumption.

"See, that wasn't all that bad." Hilary claimed. "Now that you saw how easy that was, will you be eating more greens?"

Tyson shook his head. "I still don't like vegetables. They taste weird."

"Says the guy who eats monkey brain." Ray commented.

"Just cover them with mustard!" Max suggested enthusiastically.

Hilary leaned over to Ray and whispered. "I think our next intervention should be addressed at Max concerning his mustard consumption."

Tyson gulped down his breakfast like a starving gorilla and then made the following announcement:

"Well this has all been fun, but now I gotta go see a man about a horse, ...literally. And I gotta run, Boris doesn't like to wait."

"Wait, Boris is your bushmeat guy?" Kai asked.

"Yes, are you really that surprised? What other dodgy human beings have we come in close contact with?"


End file.
